Petronius: Satires and the Book of Priapeia

Slowly, or rather already late, I understood that I had been led into a brothel. Therefore, cursing the traps of the old woman, I covered my head and began to flee through the middle of the brothel to the other side, when behold, at the very entrance, Ascyltos meets me, just as tired and dying; one would think he had been led by the same old woman. 8 Therefore, as I greeted him laughing, I asked what he was doing in such a deformed place. He wiped the sweat with his hands and said, “If you knew what happened to me!” “What is new?” I said, “I?” But he, fainting, said, “When I was wandering through the whole city and could not find the place where I had left the inn, a father of a family approached me and most humanely promised to be my guide on the journey. Having exited through the most obscure winding paths, he led me into this place, and having brought forth his money, began to ask for sexual favors. | The prostitute had already demanded a coin for the room, | he had already laid his hand on me, and if I had not been stronger, I would have paid the penalty.”

As it seemed to me, everyone everywhere had drunk savory a bitter herb/proverbial for a bad or base nature.

With joined forces, we despised the annoying man.

9 As if through a fog, I saw Giton standing on the edge of the path, and I threw myself into the same place.

When I was asking whether he had prepared anything for lunch, the boy sat on the bed and wiped away flowing tears with his thumb. Disturbed by the behavior of my brother, I asked what had happened. And he, slowly indeed and unwillingly, but after I mixed anger with my prayers, said, “That brother or companion of yours ran into the rented room a little while ago and began to want to extort my modesty. | When I shouted, he drew his sword and said, ‘If you are Lucretia, you have found a Tarquin.’” | Having heard these things, I stretched my hands toward the eyes of Ascyltos and said, “What are you saying, you filth of womanly patience, whose spirit is not even pure?” Ascyltos pretended to bristle, and soon, having lifted his hands more strongly, he shouted with a much greater effort: “Will you not be silent,” he said, “obscene gladiator, whom the arena released from ruin? Will you not be silent, you night-time assassin, who did not even fight with a pure woman when you were doing so bravely, and whose brother I was in the garden in the same way that he is the boy in the lodging-house now?” “You withdrew,” I said, “from the teacher’s conversation.” “What,” I said, “most foolish man,